Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Windy   Listen
adjective
Windy  adj.  (compar. windier; superl. windiest)  
1.
Consisting of wind; accompanied or characterized by wind; exposed to wind. "The windy hill." "Blown with the windy tempest of my heart."
2.
Next the wind; windward. "It keeps on the windy side of care."
3.
Tempestuous; boisterous; as, windy weather.
4.
Serving to occasion wind or gas in the intestines; flatulent; as, windy food.
5.
Attended or caused by wind, or gas, in the intestines. "A windy colic."
6.
Fig.: Empty; airy. "Windy joy." "Here's that windy applause, that poor, transitory pleasure, for which I was dishonored."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Windy" Quotes from Famous Books



... well what the artist means; and they could not know, unless they had seen bamboos,—and bamboos peculiarly situated. As I look at this fan I know myself descending the Morne Parnasse by the steep winding road; I have the sense of windy heights behind me, and forest on either hand, and before me the blended azure of sky and sea with one bamboo-spray swaying across it at the level of my eyes. Nor is this all;—I have the every sensation of the very moment,—the vegetal odors, the mighty tropic light, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... sunshine or storm; behind stretches a many-islanded lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue mountains; and on the north, over green rocky hills rise peaks of a more distant range. The trees hide in glens or cluster near the river; gray rocks and bowlders lie scattered about the windy pastures. The sky arches wide over all, giving room to multitudes of stars by night, and long processions of clouds blown from the sea; but also, in the childish memory where these pictures live, to deeps of celestial blue in the endless days of summer. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... will remember that her parents tried to stop her from going to the wars by haling her to the court at Toul to compel her to make a marriage which she had never promised to make—a marriage with our poor, good, windy, big, hard-fighting, and most dear and lamented comrade, the Standard-Bearer, who fell in honorable battle and sleeps with God these sixty years, peace to his ashes! And you will remember how Joan, sixteen years old, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... produced, it had to be crossed and re-crossed many times. The existing stately tree is the fruit of this patient labour; it grows at twice the pace of our oaks, and attains far larger dimensions; it is quite useless as a timber tree, but produces enormous acorns which, in windy weather, descend in showers from the trees and batter the corrugated iron roofs of the houses with a noise like ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... degree hostile to Mysticism; thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, Prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out into a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had soon to end in sick, impotent Scepticism; the worser sort explode (crepiren) in finished Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead.—But this too is portion of ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... in Labrador was for the most part rainy, foggy, cold, and windy, and his drawings were made in the cabin of his vessel, often under great difficulties. He makes this interesting observation upon the Eider duck: "In one nest of the Eider ten eggs were found; this is the most we have seen as yet in any one nest. The female draws the down from ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs

... 18. To-day we had a cold windy morning; the Black Cat came to see us, and occupied us for a long time with questions on the usages of our country. He mentioned that a council had been held yesterday to deliberate on the state of their affairs. It seems that not long ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... not go to De Crespigny House. She went, instead, to a much less pretentious school, kept by a family of four sisters, for whom the dry bones of teaching had been clothed with life. The house was perched on a high, windy cliff. The sisters, Miss Stella and Miss Clara, Miss Lucy and Miss Marianne, did their own teaching, and did it in a perfectly unconventional way to the twenty or so girls ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... the men who slept on shore, the unmarried men, those who had no "feminine hearth," as Snipe put it dolefully one dark and windy night. Since supper-time these men had been waiting and watching. But few of them had gone to bed. Gentleman and roustabout, one and all, were linked together by a common anxiety. News of the greatest import ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... some beautiful dream at last, when, after kindly farewells from her homely benefactors, she stood at the gates of Ellsworth in the chilly sunset of a windy October day, walking slowly and weakly along the graveled paths, past fading summer flowers and flaunting autumn blooms, on her way to the great house, her heart leaping with joy at the thought of her mother's kiss of welcome, ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller

... house all last winter," continued Rap, "and used to eat out of the chickens' dish. I watched them every day but one that was terribly windy, and then they stayed under the miller's cow-shed. Even strong winter birds don't like the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... bothersome babe; though my bounden duty it were to make much of it; I'm free to say, if I had my way, it's the dickens a bit I should come within touch of it. 'Tis a greedy child, and a noisy too, of a colicky turn, and pertikler windy; And, wherever the blessed infant's found, you may bet your boots there'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various

... later. Weather was not made for that purpose. If you come to think of it, how few days there are when a man can honestly say that the weather is quite to his liking! It is nearly always too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry or too windy. I don't trouble myself about sirocco. Why should Denis? He is not nearly as much of a fool as many people look. And I would not listen to Keith. He moves ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... greatly before selecting a place of meeting. She had an inclination for Greenwood Cemetery, but she gave it up as too distant; she could not absent herself for so long, as she said, without exciting suspicion. Then she thought of the Battery, but that was rather cold and windy, besides one's being exposed to intrusion from the Irish emigrants who at this point alight, with large appetites, in the New World and at last she fixed upon an oyster saloon in the Seventh Avenue, kept by a negro—an establishment of which she knew nothing save ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... friend Chalmers: a man I admire for his virtues, love for his faults, and envy for the really A1 life he has, with everything heart—my heart, I mean—could wish. It is curious to think you will read this in the grey metropolis; go the first grey, east-windy day into the Caledonian Station, if it looks at all as it did of yore: I met Satan there. And then go and stand by the cross, and remember the other one—him that went down—my brother, Robert Fergusson. It is a pity you had not made me out, and seen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... went over to "the young man," who agreed to go up to the house as soon as he had closed the shop, fit a key, and open the door, and come back to them on his way home. Solomon John came back to the station, for it was now cold and windy in the deserted streets. The family made themselves as comfortable as possible by the stove, sending Solomon John out occasionally to look for the young man. But somehow Solomon John missed him; the lights were out in the ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... night, cold and windy, the rain penetrating to the very bones, and dark as Egypt, when the two companies returned with Mrs. Crane and her six children. One rickety wagon, a mangy old horse, a cow, some bedding, and a few cooking utensils, were the trophies of the trip. These things told a tale of poverty, ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... habitual pattern. He had seen a window. He had, moreover, looked through a window. What had he seen? He thought about this, and at the same time he thought about being sick—administratively sick. He succeeded in working up a palpable fever and a windy yawning beneath the diaphragm. Before taking any action he would have to confirm what he had seen through the window of ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler

... uncongenial place they had to wait a quarter of an hour, walking up and down the windy platform, where the porter abandoned himself to the contemplation of occasional rooks, and was sometimes surprised by the arrival of a train for which he had waited so long as to have become sceptical as to the existence of such things as trains in the scheme ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... my keen sword in hand; with point and edge I fought the deadly beasts, and killed them. Many a time the hosts of monsters bore me to the ocean-bottom, but I slew numbers among them, and thus we battled all the night, until in the morning came light from the east, and I could see the windy cliffs along the shore, and the bodies of the slain sea-beasts floating on the surge. Nine there were of them, for Wyrd is gracious to the man who is valiant and unafraid. Never have I heard of a sterner conflict, nor a more unhappy warrior lost in the waters; yet I saved my life, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... thanks.' Is it not your teaching that he who gives in this world receives the benefit, since in Tskekowani[1] his possessions shall be as his gifts here? If Yaeethl wants my thanks, if they are the due of the Raven, he has them, but why or for what I know not. Your words are like the ice of a windy day, rough ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne

... looking troubled, "you ought to sew reef-points on your mouth. 'Tain't safe to open the whole of it on a windy night like this. First thing you know you'll carry away the top of ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... in five or six days the fresh leaves sprouting forth, and the young grass shooting up, give an appearance of spring which it requires weeks of a colder climate to produce. The birds, which in the hot, dry, windy season had been silent, now burst forth into merry twittering songs, and are busy building their nests. Some of them, indeed, hatch several times a year. The lowering of the temperature, by rains or other causes, has much ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... Mary Anna, "I remember I went in one cold, windy day, and I found you boys all snugly stowed in your snow-house, warm and comfortable, ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott

... was low at first, being full of tears, But as it cleared, it grew full loud and shrill, Growing a windy ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... you merely startled me, that's all. My Indians managed to get hold of some hootch at Tagish and upset our canoe just below here. It was windy and of course they couldn't swim—none of them can, you know—so I had hard work to save them. I've already explained how I happened to select this particular refuge. Your neighbors—" her lip curled disdainfully, then she shrugged. "Well, I never got such a reception ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... necessarily the danger of infection, but the peril of a disastrous collision. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that many a good ship has gone to the bottom, taking her crew with her, as the result of collision with a derelict in the dark hours of a dirty, windy night; and if a derelict is fallen in with under circumstances which render the salving of her impossible, she certainly ought to be destroyed. Yet, in the case of yonder ship— which, by the way, is the Linschoten, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... physical beauty—temperament which has the keys of so many doors, and can open them at will, showing glimpses of wonderful rooms, and of gardens bathed in sunshine or steeped in mysterious twilight, and of savage wastes, the wilderness, the windy tracts by the sea, landscapes in snow, autumn breathing in mist; temperament which can even simulate knowledge, and can rouse all the under-longings which so often lie sleeping and unknown ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... urged his request with much eloquence; to all which the laird replied only by nods and smiles, without saying a word. When, however, the candidate was gone, he looked across to his goose, and emphatically remarked, "I'm thinkin' yon windy chiel'll no tell muckle that you ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... said Jack, 'and it's no good crying; let's go to the bottom of the tower again, it's not so windy there ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton

... wind holds, and what a summer's squall the whole thing has been," answered the host, gleefully; "I always said 't was a big windy bubble, that needed but the prick of British ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... anything else that is light, yet will let the rains or waterings leach through. No one who has not actually tried it can know of the help a mulch really is to Asters. I doubt whether first-class flowers can be obtained in dry, windy countries, or in hot, sun-scorched valleys without its aid. Asters love the sun, nevertheless unless their feet are kept cool and moist they inevitably burn and wilt. A mulch keeps the ground cool, and ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... discussed with himself, "to put in three years at this just to get out of work all the rest of his life? That's all it comes to, even if I can keep the old man's money from sifting through my hands like dry sand on a windy day. The question is, will it pay a man to ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... from Buck Hill 'til we's good an' ready—not whilst Marse Bob Bucknor's prodigy is livin', an' Mr. Jeff the spitin' image of his gran'dad. I's sho Miss Milly done put you in this pretty lil' room kase she thought you'd like it, bein' so handy to the stairs an' all, an' the windy right over the baid so's you kin lay an 'look out at the trees an' flowers—an' if there ain't a wishteria vine a comin' in the casement an' twinin' aroun' jes' like a pixture. I tell you Miss Ann, this ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... is heard no more By windy Illium's sea-built walls; From the washing wave and the lonely shore No wail goes up as Hector falls. On Ida's mount is the shining snow, But Jove has gone from its brow away, And red on the plain the poppies grow Where Greek and Trojan ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... undulatory movement. He does not propel himself along by sheer force of muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow, for instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirection that puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter day he rides the vast aerial billows as placidly as ever, rising and falling as he comes up toward you, carving his way through the resisting currents by a slight oscillation to the right and left, but never once beating ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... "you shall not be called the People of the Little Hills; for these ridges, indeed, are not such hills as those whose bald and windy tops are keeping the bones of our fathers. But you shall be known and feared greatly by our enemies as 'The Children of the Shining One,' under whose protection ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the sake Of these, my kinsmen and my countrymen, Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled To plant ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton

... reason, to think of the charming creature at his side being mixed up with such elements, pushed and elbowed by them, conjoined with them in emulation, in unsightly strainings and clappings and shoutings, in wordy, windy iteration of inanities. Worst of all was the idea that she should have expressed such a congregation to itself so acceptably, have been acclaimed and applauded by hoarse throats, have been lifted up, to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... you. You will hail the huge release, Saying the sheathing of a thousand swords, In silence and injustice, well accords With Christmas bells. And you will gild with grease The papers, the employers, the police, And vomit up the void your windy words To your new Christ; who bears no whip of cords For them that traffic in the doves ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various

... head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snip nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of Famine descending upon the earth or some scarecrow ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... was a great four-square stone buildin' beside a windy road, and niver a tree in sight; but pastures where the grass would cut your boot, an' stone walls, an' brown hills around, like the rim av a saucer. All belonged to the estate that Jemmy Nichol's father managed—a bankrupt property, or next door to that. It's done ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... for that loss, be found to have the essential property, to wear even the decent dignity, of reaching further and of providing for more contingencies. The season was, in local parlance, "on," the elements were assembled; the big windy hotel, the draughty social hall, swarmed with "types," in Charlotte's constant phrase, and resounded with a din in which the wild music of gilded and befrogged bands, Croatian, Dalmatian, Carpathian, violently exotic and nostalgic, was distinguished ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... guests. There, and to these, she tells Whose niece she was, whose daughter, and whose wife. And then must they compare her with Augusta, Ay, and prefer her too; commend her form, Extol her fruitfulness; at which a shower Falls for the memory of Germanicus, Which they blow over straight with windy praise, And puffing hopes of her aspiring sons; Who, with these hourly ticklings, grow so pleased, And wantonly conceited of themselves, As now, they stick not to believe they're such As these do give them out; and would be thought More than competitors, immediate heirs. Whilst to their ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... and windy: it cleared now slowly, the warm summer rain falling softly, the fresh blue stealing broadly from behind the gray. It seemed to Margaret like a blessing; for her brain rose up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... supposed, in their days of darkness, to be their patron, they pushed boldly out to sea and steered westward, a boat-load of Spanish fishermen following in their wake. Passing island after island of green and fertile look, they found themselves at last in what seemed a less favored zone—as windy as the "roaring forties," and growing chillier every hour. Fogs gathered quickly, so that they could scarcely see the companion boat, and the Spanish fishermen called out to them, "Garda da la Man do Satanaxio!" ("Look ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... ye complaisant husbands!) in what is she more fickle than in dress? We might waste a life in finding a suitable simile for her volatility in this matter: rainbows with changing colours, water on a windy day, the wind itself in the month of March, the much-desiderated perpetual motion; all are feeble similes to describe a woman's fickleness in dress. Shall we liken it to her tongue's untiring play? or shall we not rather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... this is become a second nature, and can scarcely be called a hardship to them, insomuch that I used to say, they seemed to be of the duck kind, and to love water as well. Though I never saw this preparation for sleep in windy weather, yet, setting out early in a morning from one of the huts, I have seen the marks of their lodging, where the ground has been free from rime or snow, which remained all round the spot where they had lain' (Letters from Scotland, Lond. 1754, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... had not separated until unusually late on the previous night, the President was up and abroad on this exquisite morning, summoned by some "message of range and of sweep——" to the flushing stretches of pasture and the windy hill-side. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... Yet she has totally vanished. After they passed the postern her abductors left no trace. Whether they had or had not with them a two- wheeled or a four-wheeled carriage or a litter or a sedan-chair cannot be determined; nor whether they were on foot or on horseback. The weather was dry and windy and the rocky roads out of Trebula showed no tracks of any kind. The country has been scoured in every direction and all persons questioned, not only at the change-stations on the main roads, and at crossroads, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... the windy levels spread About the gates of Rye? O that was where the Northmen fled, When Alfred's ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... o' night you jest tap hard on that windy I'll know you want the doc. fetchin'. An' I'll come right along up an' git orders. I'll ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... family was one day invited to a wedding on the other side of the river. Not having any clothes fit for a party, I remained at home, and at mid-day started on horseback alone, with all the dogs, for a battue. The day was sultry, although windy; as the roar of the wind in the canes prevented me from hearing the barking of the dogs, having arrived at one of our former hunting camping-places, fifteen miles from the house, I threw myself upon the ground, and allowed my ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... at need," returned he in green, casting a rapid and peculiar glance around him. "But mill it has been, notwithstanding one might wish it a nobler origin. The windy situation the pillars to keep off the invading vermin, the shape, the air, the very complexion, prove it. Whir-r-r, whir-r-r; there has been clatter enough here in time past, I warrant you. Hist! It is ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... beauty to its wearer. Good taste involves suitable fabrics—a neat and becoming 'fitting' to her figure—colors suited to her complexion, and a simple and unaffected manner of wearing one's clothes. A worsted dress in a warm day, or a white one in a cold day, or a light, thin one in a windy day, are all in bad taste. Very fine or very delicate dresses worn in the street, or very highly ornamented clothes worn to church or to shop in, are in bad taste. Very long dresses worn in muddy or dusty weather, even if long dresses are the fashion, ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... have passed, one after one, Wearing their radiance to the darkened room,—— Surely, new-comers to Oblivion May still descry, in that all-quenching gloom, Rare faces, lovely, lifted and alight, Like tapers burning through the windy night. ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton

... continued to clang, and through the latticed windows Mr. Hare watched the divines hurrying along the windy terrace, and the tramp of the boys going to their class-rooms could be heard in passages below. Then a young man entered. He was thin, and he was dressed in black. His face was Roman, the profile especially was what you might expect to find on a Roman coin—a high nose, a ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... particulars, I learn from Malaterra, that the Arabs had introduced into Sicily the use of camels (l. i. c. 33) and of carrier-pigeons, (c. 42;) and that the bite of the tarantula provokes a windy disposition, quae per anum inhoneste crepitando emergit; a symptom most ridiculously felt by the whole Norman army in their camp near Palermo, (c. 36.) I shall add an etymology not unworthy of the xith century: Messana is divided from Messis, the place ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... penetrating drizzle that is generally to be met with off the English coast. Arthur, left alone on the heaving deck, surveyed the scene, and thought it very desolate. Around was a grey waste of tossing waters, illumined here and there by the setting rays of an angry sun, above, a wild and windy sky, with not even a sea-gull in all its space, and in the far distance a white and fading line, which was ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... the procession of the Bem-casados or Well-married, in honor of the parents of Jesus. Then there are lofty crucifixes and waving flags; and when the great banner, bearing simply the letters S.P.Q.R., comes flapping round the windy corner, one starts in wonder at the permanent might of that vast superstition which has grasped the very central symbol of ancient empire, and brought it down, like a boulder on a glacier, into modern days. It makes all Christianity seem but a vast palimpsest, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... country near me. He was not so very old, either, but he looked it. He had to be pushed around in a wheel-chair. People said he had locomotor ataxia, but that really meant syphilis. We boys used to poke all kinds of fun at him because one windy day his hat and his wig were blown off together, and we discovered that he was as bald as an egg. We used to make jokes about his automobile, as we called it. It had a little handle in front, instead of a steering-wheel, and ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair

... Beware I warn thee yet, to tell thy griefs In terms becoming majesty to hear: I warn thee thus, because I know thy temper Is insolent, and haughty to superiors. How often hast thou braved my peaceful court, Filled it with noisy brawls, and windy boasts; And with past service, nauseously repeated, Reproached even ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... her right eye, which was attributed by her mother to her having neglected the preceding day to bathe it in elder-flower water; by her governess, to her having sat up the preceding night to supper; by her maid, to her having been found peeping through a windy key-hole; and by the young lady herself, to her having been kept poring for two hours over ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... windie, and now and then a breeze sailing in over Mister Depew's Central—I tell you the Beersheba Flats was a summer resort that made the Catskills look like a hole in the ground. With his person full of beer and his feet out the windy and his old woman frying pork chops over a charcoal furnace and the childher dancing in cotton slips on the sidewalk around the organ-grinder and the rent paid for a week—what does a man want better on a hot night than that? ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... of the towing ropes. The fat Frenchman, who was good-naturedly tipsy, picked up a loose half brick and tossed it after the departing Slasher. The missile took him between the shoulders, and he, turning in wrath, flung out one windy buffet at his assailant, and toppled him over the bridge into the canal. There was a momentary flurry, and then a bystander lent the immersed Frenchman one end of a barge-pole, and he was drawn to the side, apparently quite sobered. The ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... At Chicago great schooners have been cast far up upon the boulevard that skirts a waterside park, or thrown bodily athwart the railroad tracks that on the south side of the city border the lake. The writer has seen from a city street, crowded with shoppers on a bright but windy day, vessels break to pieces on the breakwater, half a mile away but in plain sight, and men go down to their death in the raging seas. On all the lakes, but particularly on the smaller ones, an ugly sea is tossed up by the wind in a time so short as to seem miraculous to the practised ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... Windy was not quite comfortable in his mind. Three or four of the crew were great scoundrels, and several of the emigrants were ruffianly fellows, ready to engage in any sort ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... They habitually tremble much: and their necks have an extraordinary, apparently convulsive, backward and forward movement. Good birds walk in a singular manner, as if their small feet were stiff. Owing to their large tails, they fly badly on a windy day. The dark- coloured varieties are generally larger than ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... Dover to Salisbury Plain. Of all English roads, it has carried the longest pageant. It saw the beginnings of English history; for four centuries it was one of the best known highways in Christendom: the vision from its windy heights is one of the widest and most gracious of all visions of woods and fields and hills. By the trackway they made upon the ridge came the worshippers to Stonehenge; Phoenician traders brought bronze to barter for British tin, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... pilots map the windy skies; To serve our pleasure, huger galleons wait. Aflame with more than magic lights, our ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... a sudden pause of impulse, had ceased, and begun to look around him. The only light came from two long pale cracks in the rain-clouds of the west. The wind was blowing through the broken windows, which stretched away on either hand. A dreary, windy gloom, therefore, pervaded the desolate place; and in the dusk, and their settled order, the machines looked multitudinous. An eerie sense of discomfort came over him as he gazed, and he lifted his violin to dispel the strange unpleasant feeling that grew upon him. But at ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... et Ile Saint-Paul: oceanic with persistent westerly winds and high humidity Iles Crozet: windy, cold, wet, and cloudy Iles Kerguelen: oceanic, cold, overcast, windy ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... not far from Chicago proved correct, for when they had arisen above the mist that suddenly spread over Lake Michigan, they saw, in the distance, the Windy City. ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... experience—experience older than his own, and traditional amongst his people—he knew the soil of the fields and its variations almost foot by foot; he understood the springs and streams; hedgerow and ditch explained themselves to him; the coppices and woods, the water-meadows and the windy heaths, the local chalk and clay and stone, all had a place in his regard—reminded him of the crafts of his people, spoke to him of the economies of his own cottage life; so that the turfs or the faggots or the timber ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... walked this beat took no notice of the windy tune still played on the dead heath-bells. She did not turn her head to look at a group of dark creatures further on, who fled from her presence as she skirted a ravine where they fed. They were about a score of the small wild ponies known as heath-croppers. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... come to all through all the ages, or at least divert without debauching the mind of the idler, the trifler, and the macaroni? I believe this ingenuous feeling to be very far removed from the wheezy aspirations of windy ignorance, or the spasms for fame which afflict with colic the bowels, empty and flatulent, of sheer scribblers and dunces who take a mean advantage of the invention of printing. Let us be tender of the honest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... other hand, the opposite excess is still more easy. So much stress may be laid on the form of words, and so much mastery obtained of the art of winning attention, that the necessity of having a Divine message to deliver or of depending on the power of the Spirit of God is forgotten. The windy master of words, whose own spirit is not subdued either by the impression of great thoughts or the sense of a great responsibility, but who can draw the eyes of men on his own performances and earn the incense of applause, has always ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... middle of March ('till which time a man should not in honestie catch a Trout) or in April, if the weather be dark, or a little windy, or cloudie, the best fishing is with the Palmer-worm, of which I last spoke to you; but of these there be divers kinds, or at least of divers colours, these and the May-fly are the ground of all fly-Angling, which are ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton

... the environs of a great city, possibly, for the wind often blew, laden with fragrance as from choice rather than extensive gardens, through my casement, and the shadow of a tall tree impending over the skylight of the bath-room was, when windy, cast so distinctly on its panes as to convince me of the neighborhood of an English elm, the foliage of which tree I ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... occupied by an intruder. Amaryllis had always been so fond of the kitchen—the oldest part of the house, two centuries at least. The wide hearth and immense chimney, up which, when the fire was out, of a winter's night you could see the stars; over which of a windy night you could imagine the witches riding by, borne on the deep howling of the blast; the great beam and the gun slung to it; the heavy oaken table, unpolished, greyish oak; the window in the thick wall, set with yellowish ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... between the rich lane-banks, heavy with drooping ferns and honeysuckle; out upon the windy down toward the old Court, nestled amid its ring of wind-clipt oaks; through the gray gateway into the homeclose; and then he pauses a moment to look around; first at the wide bay to the westward, with its southern wall of purple cliffs; then at the dim ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... things than gold, and fame, and the fortress which must be taken of Nueva Cordoba. With his eyes upon the gleaming sea he thought of Damaris Sedley, and of Sidney, and of a day at Windsor when the Queen had showed him much favor, and of a little, windy knoll, near to his house of Ferne, where, returning from hunting or hawking, he was wont to check his horse that he might taste the sweet and ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... out now and then at the wild December day, the trees reeling in the wind, and the sky driving with the leaden clouds. It was too cold and too windy to snow all the afternoon, but towards night it moderated, and the wind died down. When Mrs. Thayer came home it was snowing quite hard, and her green veil was white when she entered the kitchen. She took it off and shook it, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... began again. In a day or two the stampeders began to limp back hungry and weary, and every one who brought a pick or a shovel was re-employed. But hundreds kept on toward Lake Bennett, and thence by water up Windy Arm to the Atlin country, and many of them have not yet returned to ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... to play, but turning a spirited face toward her father. "What piffle! Whenever a player pitches rotten ball you'll always hear him howling about the support he didn't get. Schlachweiler was a bum pitcher. Anybody could hit him with a willow wand, on a windy day, with the ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... Laird of Windy-wa's, I cam nae here without a cause, An' I hae gotten forty fa's In coming o'er the knowe, joe. The night it is baith wind and weet; The morn it will be snaw and sleet; My shoon are frozen to my feet; O, rise an' let me in, joe! Let me ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... same in every part of the earth, it is invariably fair in one place, at the very time that it is rainy in another. Nay, we may safely aver that there is not a day, nor an hour, in the year, in which it is not dry and rainy, cloudy and clear, windy and calm, in hundreds ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... sugar-cane, some Sweet potatoes, and tapioca. The patches thus sown generally lie adjacent to one another. If the weather is fine, the fallen timber becomes dry enough to burn well after one month. If much rain falls it is necessary to wait longer in the hope of drier weather. Choosing a windy day, they set fire to all the adjacent patches after shouting out warnings to all persons in the fields. While the burning goes on, the men "whistle for the wind," or rather blow for it, rattling their tongues in their mouths. Some of the older men make lengthy orations shouted into ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... weeks the mail-boat touched our harbor for the last time that season: being then southbound into winter quarters at St. John's. It chanced in the night—a clear time, starlit, but windy, with a high sea running beyond the harbour rocks. She came in by way of North Tickle, lay for a time in the quiet water off our wharf, and made the open through the Gate. From our platform we watched the shadowy bulk and warm lights slip behind Frothy Point and the shoulder of ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... sank, a cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie. If this turn in the weather had come sooner, I should not have got away. We burrowed down in the straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die out of the west and the stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky. Peter kept sighing and groaning. Tony whispered to me that he was afraid Pavel would never get well. We lay still and did not talk. Up there the stars grew magnificently bright. Though we had come from such different parts of the world, in both ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... great distance, though better concealed than I could be within a two-inch board. In a little time, I observed the noise and flutter of wings to increase very fast, and my box was tossed up and down like a signpost in a windy day. I heard several bangs or buffets, as I thought, given to the eagle (for such I am certain it must have been that held the ring of my box in his beak), and then all on a sudden felt myself falling perpendicularly down, for above a minute, but with such incredible swiftness ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... mountain road were flanked by tracts of prairie-land, beautifully purpling in the evening air. After a ride of thirty-five miles, we arrived at a large fold, where, by removing the inner thorn-fences, we found fresh grass for our starving beasts. The night was raw and windy, and thick mists deepened into a drizzle, which did not quench our thirst, but easily drenched the saddle cloths, our only bedding. In one sense, however, the foul weather was propitious to us. Our track might easily ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... the owner's hand or eye is on them! If it announce the coming of one loved and longed for, how we delight to look at it, to sit down on it, to caress it in our fancies, as a lone exile walking out on a windy pier yearns towards the merchantman lying along-side, with the colors of his own native land at her peak, and the name of the port he sailed from long ago upon her stern! But if it tell the near approach of the undesired, inevitable guest, what sound short of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... found it very rough and fretting: I then designed fixing it to an old crown of a hat that held my fish-hooks and lines, and so let it hang down before her face; but that also had its inconveniences, as it would slap her eyes in windy weather, and would be not only useless, but very troublesome in flight; so that I was scarce ever more puzzled before. At last I thought of a method that answered exceedingly well, the hint of which ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... would have filled the heart of almost any boy with sweet delight Myles and Gascoyne found one summer afternoon. They called it their Eyry, and the name suited well for the roosting-place of the young hawks that rested in its windy stillness, looking down upon the shifting castle ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... Thetis and the Dawn fought under the walls of windy Troy. Douglas beheld the distant cloud, and rode to Bruce, imploring leave to hurry to Randolph's aid. "I will not break my ranks for him," said Bruce; yet Douglas had his will. But the English wavered, seeing his line advance, and thereon Douglas ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... May I had been wandering up and down, through rocky gorges, by little swampy bits of ground, and on the tops of windy headlands, looking for flowers, and had found many: —large blue violets, the like of which you never saw; white violets, too, creamy and fragrant; gentle little houstonias; gay and dancing erythroniums, and wind-flowers delicately ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... wandered erewhile round in search of undiscovered skies; But a spirit sits beside me, veiled in robes of dazzling white, And a dear one's whisper wakens with the symphonies of night; And a low sad music cometh, borne along on windy wings, Like a strain familiar rising from a maze ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... I could get to; and it symbolised emancipation from monotonous labour and everlasting bricks and mortar. I could watch the dying of the sunset, and the outcoming of the stars, the tossing of the pale willows—there on the eyot—in the windy dusk, undisturbed. And so I have come to entertain a great fondness for it, since it tranquillised me and helped me to see life calmly and to bring myself in line with fact, to endure and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... the other night, about lucky people. Barmer declared that he knew the man (of whom we had all of us heard) who was left a large fortune by an eccentric old gentleman whose hat he had picked up on a windy day at Brighton. A better and more original contribution to the discussion was that of Bastable, a retired Anglo-Indian. I give it as nearly as I can in his own words. "The luckiest man I ever met," he said, "is my groom-gardener, Andrews. I don't mean to say in respect of prosperity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various

... reflections nightmarish! It seems, from such rigs, that our biggest Big Wigs are scarcest to govern a parish. MCDOUGALL again, is agog to restrain all that gives his soul pain—it's a squeamish one!— He thinks he's a stayer as Jabberwock-slayer, mere Angry Boy he, not a Beamish One! These Oracles windy do raise such a shindy, and kick such a doose of a dust up, One would think without them we were wrong stern and stem, and the whole of creation would bust up. But verily why men should new worship Hymen,—who, just ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various

... had rushed into the outer darkness in the wake of the highwayman returned presently. Mere impulse and swift natural reaction from their former enforced inactivity rather than any hope of success had sent them hot-foot on the pursuit. The noisy, windy night, the absolute dark, obviated all possibility of coming up with him. Grumbling and theorising, they returned to the room and closed the door ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... Lines of white in a sullen sea, Shadows rising on you and me—The swallows are making them ready to fly, Wheeling out on a windy sky: ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... wind that continually chilled him. He almost determined to give it up. Of what use was it? Evidently she did not care for him, and the words, "Mr. Forrester here again! he must surely be dull at home," sounded in his ears. Very east-windy they were; still, he loved her with a great love, and he could not give her up: he was in a mist, and could see neither to go ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... from deep-sea fishing, and as they neared the island they were met and set upon by a swarming army of rabihorcados. Darting white and black streaks crossed the blue of sky like a changeful web. The air was full of plaintive cries and hoarse croaks and the windy rush of wings. So marvelous was this scene of incredibly swift action, of kaleidoscopic change, of streaking lines and curves, that the tragedy at first was lost upon me. Then the shrieking of a booby told me that the robber birds were after their prey. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... Hammond stepped from the train at El Cajon, New Mexico, it was nearly midnight, and her first impression was of a huge dark space of cool, windy emptiness, strange and silent, stretching away under great blinking ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... upturned handsome face. Then all again was whirled in mist and foam; one breaker smote the sea-wall in a surge of froth, another plunged upon its heels; with inconceivable swiftness came rain; lightning deluged the expanse of surf, and showed the windy trees bent landward by the squall. It was long past midnight now, and the storm was on us for ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... was young and light-hearted once again, and the friends of my young manhood had come trooping back from the shadows to make a merry night of it once more in London town. And when I put the book down, having read it from cover to cover, it was 'past three o'clock and a windy morning.'" ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... might, Burning Lion, burning Lion, Comes the honey of all sweet, And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat. And though, by thine alternate breath, Every kiss thou dost inspire Echoeth Back from the windy vaultages of death; Yet thy clear warranty above Augurs the wings of death too must Occult reverberations stir of love Crescent and life incredible; That even the kisses of the just Go down not unresurgent to the dust. Yea, not a kiss ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... he remains a long time in the same locality, and sometimes stops for many days on the same tree—a firm place among its branches serving him for a bed. It is rare for the Orang to pass the night in the summit of a large tree, probably because it is too windy and cold there for him; but, as soon as night draws on, he descends from the height and seeks out a fit bed in the lower and darker part, or in the leafy top of a small tree, among which he prefers Nibong Palms, Pandani, or one of ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... yesterday was, because one can never exactly repeat his observation,—cannot turn the leaf of the book of life backward,—and because each day has characteristics of its own. This was a typical March day, clear, dry, hard, and windy, the river rumpled and crumpled, the sky intense, distant objects strangely near; a day full of strong light, unusual; an extraordinary lightness and clearness all around the horizon, as if there were ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... the west, and thus some of the tents were always comfortable. I have seen Baby's mother running in a hard rain, with little Red-Riding-Hood in her arms, to take refuge with the Adjutant's wife, when every other abode was full of smoke; and I must admit that there were one or two windy days that season, when nobody could really keep warm, and Annie had to remain ignominiously in her cradle, with as many clothes on as possible, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... One windy, sunny day the little girl was "riding to Boston" on the front gate; she had swung out and let the wind blow her back again a half dozen times, and she was happy as a captain on the high seas, enjoying the swaying, ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.

... Gellert's pious Songs, were made known to him in this tender age, through his Mother; and were, for that reason, doubly dear. At one time also the artless Mother made an attempt on him with Hofmannswaldau;[59] but the sugary and windy tone of him hurt the tender poet-feeling of the Boy. With smiling dislike he pushed the Book away; and afterwards was wont to remark, when, at the new year, rustic congratulants with their foolish rhymes would too liberally present themselves, "Mother, there is a new Hofmannswaldau at the door!" ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... rainy, and windy autumn night. The rain now pelted down in warm, heavy drops, now stopped again. It was too dark to see the path across the field, and in the wood it was pitch black, so that although Katusha knew the way well, she got off the path, and got to the little station where the train stopped ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... a Milanese and a mere youth Ammiani was antipathetic to Corte, who closed his laughter with a windy rattle of his lips, and a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in lands 18 feet wide; put the guano in a pail and walk up one side and down the other with a moderate step throwing handfulls across at each step, and you will find you do not vary much from two hundred pounds to the acre. Never sow in a windy day if it can be avoided, nor faster than it can be plowed in the ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson



Words linked to "Windy" :   wordy, utopian, impractical, Laputan, blowy, airy, breezy, wind, prolix, Windy City, windiness, verbose, visionary, stormy



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com